Recovering a Lost WordPress Password

I often rely on people with greater expertise than my own. Here's a webpage that, judging by the grateful people posting comments, has been helping people recover WordPress administration passwords for years:

Lost Your WordPress Admin Password?

It seems that the above webpage has been helping people recover WordPress Administration passwords for 7 years or more. In 2014, there are people still giving their thanks for this post which was first published in 2007.

Ed Abbott

How to Find Your WordPress Database

I was looking for the WordPress
database today. Looks like it is
in this file here in the topmost
folder for WordPress:

wp-config.php

Once you get into this file, you
can find the following information:

• name of the database
• username for the database
• password for the database
• host for the database

I'm far from being an expert on
WordPress. However, it seems to
me that the host will either be
a URL or an IP address.

I suspect that once you have the
username and password, you can
log into the database in some
manner or other. However, I
would imagine that access is
limited to logins coming from
certain IP addresses.

Once you are logged in, you can
access the database by name.

This is all speculation on my
part. I've not tried any of this
yet.

Here's where I've written about
connecting to and disconnecting
from a MySQL database:

MySQL --- Getting Started

Since WordPress stores its data
in a MySQL database, it seems
that you could in theory connect
to the database in order to back
it up.

Of course, this is pure theory.
In actual practice, hosting companies
probably have severe restrictions on such
things because they do not want to give
access to databases to the outside world.
That's my conjecture at this point.

Ed Abbott

Backup WordPress

Here's a link that describes
how to backup wordpress:

How to back up your
WordPress blog in 60 seconds

Apparently Wordpress has some
kind of export function. I think
this may be a plugin but I'm not
sure. I'm learning as I write.

In the above link, someone left
a comment saying that you are
better off using Cpanel for backups.
Does Cpanel backup both the database
and the other content? Again, I'm
not sure.

Here's a Wordpress plugin that claims
it can be used to do complete backups
of both the database and the other
content:

BackUpWordPress

Here's someone who says there are 2 sides
to a WordPress backup:

• code side
• database side

Here's where he mentions
the 2 sides:

Code side and database side

This makes sense. Your blog
writings probably go into a
database. The templates are
probably code. You would need
to backup both sides.

It seems that there are 2 sides
to everything: a front side and
a back side; a inside and an outside.

WordPress seems to be no different.
It has 2 sides as well. It has a code
side and a data side.

Ed Abbott

Fixing WordPress Templates

Finally! At last! I'm
ready to write about fixing
WordPress.

Specifically, I'm writing
about fixing WordPress
templates.

There are two ways to do this.
However, the two ways are really
just one way and that is to
edit text files.

Here are the two ways to fix
WordPress:

1. Use the WordPress Interface
2. Edit the text files directly

As a web developer, I prefer the
second method, editing the text
files directly.

However, for many people, this is
too steep a learning curve. Many
will prefer to edit these same
text files indirectly through the
WordPress Administrative Interface.

Each to his own.

I'll write about the Administrative
Interface first.

The first thing you need to do is
to find your Dashboard. This is
the web page from which you administer
WordPress.

Here's how to find it using Cpanel
under Bluehost Hosting:

1. Log into Cpanel
2. Find Software/Services
3. Find WordPress
4. Click on WordPress

I'll write more later.

Ed Abbott



Ed Abbott

What Is a Blog?

What is a blog? You are now reading
a blog. I'm now writing a blog.

A blog is a weblog where, in most
cases, the entries appear in reverse
chronological order.

In other words, if a make a new blog
entry it appears first in my blog.

My first blog entry ever written
appears last in my blog.

The next blog entry I ever made appears
second to last in my blog.

So basically, a blog is a journal where
time runs backwards.

The last page of the journal contains the
oldest entry. The first page of the journal
contains the most recent entry.

Wordpress is blogging software. Since this
is a Wordpress blog, thought I should mention
that.

As of this writing, this blog is created using
Google's Blogger, not Wordpress.

More later.

Ed Abbott

What Is a Content Management System?

What is a Content Management System?

Since this is a WordPress blog, I'll
answer the question in relation to
Wordress.

In simple terms, a Content Management
System is a system that allows you to
create web pages at will without having
to know HTML.

HTML is the computer language that lies
behind every web page, generally speaking.

More accurately, HTML is the computer language
that can be read by search engines that visit
your website and catalog what you've written
there.

So basically, HTML is two things to you. It
is a language that creates web pages that the
public can see.

Secondly, it is a language that can be read
by search engines, like Google, and these
search engines are able to catalog your web
page.

The fact that HTML is catalogable means that
your web page is searchable by the public.
That is to say, an HTML web page can be found
by the public becauee of what you've written
there.

For example, if you write an article about
knitting sweaters on a web page, a
search engine might pick it up and include
it in its search results when someone types
knitting sweaters in the search box.

You get the idea.

If a search engine can catalog your web page
writing in a very specific way, your web page
is HTML.

So what is a Content Management System?

It is a system for manageing HTML without having
to know HTML. That's a simple definition.

Perhaps a better and more accurate definition of
a Content Management System is a system that manages
your HTML for you.

A more practical definition of a Content Management
System is that it manages your web pages for you.

So we've now defined a Content Management System
several different ways.

There's more. There's more ways that a Content Management
System can be defined.

By the way, a Content Management System is often called
a CMS. I'll use this term from now on as well as Content
Management System.

CMS is short for Content Management System.

WordPress is a Content Management System or CMS.

According to this web page on the WordPress site,
Wordpress started out as a blogging system but has
evolved into a Content Management System:

Here's the page that explains this:

WordPress About Us Page

So basically, a Content Management System is more
than just a blogging system. A CMS is a full-blown
webpage system.

More later.

Ed Abbott

What Is Wordpress?

OK. This is a new blog.

I'm educating myself about
WordPress.

Here's the Wikipedia article:

Wikipedia WordPress Article

The first thing that the article
says is that WordPress is an open
source blog publishing application.

What does this mean?

I'll break it down.

A blog is a weblog that you make
a journal entry into every day.

If not every day, then every week
or month or whatever.

So, WordPress is blog publishing
software.

That's the first thing to understand.

The next?

WordPress is open source and free.

What does this mean? It mean that anyone
can look at the source code. That is
to say, anyone can read the computer code
that is used to create WordPress.

What about the fact that WordPress is free?
This means you can download it for free.

In other words, it is free software. Your
first download is free and updates are
free.

So basically, WordPress is blogging software.
That's the simple way to look at it.

Actually, WordPress is more than blogging
software since it has been extended so that
you can create more than just blogs with it.

However, it started out as blogging software
and that is perhaps the simplest way to look
at it.

Look at it as blogging software.

That's a good way to get started.

More later.

Ed Abbott